Rick George: Hannah’s hyperbole and Cameron’s hypocrisy

Daryl Hannah’s hyperbole and James Cameron’s hypocrisy: Rick George

In his new book, Rick George, chief executive of energy giant Suncor Energy Inc. for 21 years, takes aim at some of the oil sands higher profile critics who he says often fudge the facts and don’t practice what they preach.

The following is an exclusive excerpt from his book Sun Rise, which goes on sale Saturday

Actor Daryl Hannah managed to get herself arrested in front of the White House in the summer of 2011 for protesting against construction of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. assume that many people who neither knew nor cared about either the pipeline or the oil sands were drawn to the story of her arrest based on recognition of her name. If that was the case and they read beyond the headlines to absorb some of her reasons for protesting, they were unknowingly being fed a litany of exaggerated claims and questionable “facts.” Here are the statements she delivered to U.S. media sources, followed by accurate responses that no one in the United States, to my knowledge, employed to repudiate her claims:

“It’s well documented that the tar sands itself is one of the world’s largest ecological atrocities and disasters.”

If she meant the existence of a trillion barrels or so of bitumen within a wilderness setting, she may have had a point — but an empty one. The sands have been there for a few million years, after all. I suspect, however, that she was referring to the development of the oil sands by Suncor and other firms as a means of providing North Americans with petroleum-based energy. The Royal Society of Canada report compared a number of industries with the oil sands and found that, as an industry, the oil sands ranked fifth for mercury, sixth for cadmium, and eighth for lead and some carcinogenic pollutants. These rankings made no reference to the actual volume of pollutants released, which continues to measure well below the acceptable level set by various government regulators. RSC members also added, “The claim by some critics of the oil sands indicate that it is the most environmentally destructive project on earth is not supported by the evidence.”

“The contribution [of the oil sands] to the carbon in the atmosphere is unprecedented.”

According to the RSC, the entire oil sands operation contributes perhaps 5 percent of Canada’s total carbon emissions. Sounds like a lot, but the report also noted that fossil-fuelled electric power generation in Canada contributes 16 percent of carbon emissions, and transportation services add 27 percent. How does the oil sands contribution possibly qualify as unprecedented?

“I’ve been hearing about how many people have cancer that live downstream from the tar sands project.”

Whoever Ms. Hannah was listening to did not include physicians and researchers from Alberta Health Services. In 2006 a physician claimed he had diagnosed several cases of a rare form of bile cancer in the village of Fort Chipewyan and immediately blamed emissions from oil sands operations. This became rich fodder for every critic, and soon headlines around the world were trumpeting stories about the carcinogenic impact of the oil sands. The news was personally unsettling to me. If our oil sands production was responsible for elevated cancer rates, I wanted to know about it. The doctor’s claims were taken seriously enough to warrant a detailed study of cancer rates in the area, conducted by Alberta Health Services. The findings confirmed a slight rise in the rate of biliary cancers—three confirmed cases over twelve years—compared with the general population. Other cancers were measured at or below expected levels. The physician conducting the tests wrote “I believe the community should be reassured that numbers are not as high as reported. These results were based on a small number of cases—there is no cause for alarm.” He recommended continued monitoring of the situation, and I totally agreed. The study, launched by Alberta Health Services, was reviewed by independent cancer experts in Australia, New Zealand and the United States, as well as two Canadian First Nations researchers, one recommended by a health board in Fort Chipewyan. All agreed on the study’s statistical exactness and general validity.

“[The oil sands have] poisoned everyone who’s lived downstream.”

I find it unacceptable that no one seriously challenged this statement. One more finding from the RSC report: “Environmental contaminants at current levels of exposure are unlikely to cause major health impacts for the general population.” The report added that projected emissions levels were not likely to change that prospect. Hollywood personalities are one thing, but from time to time sources with impressive credentials make claims that reveal a distinct bias against the oil sands—a bias that the scientific evidence fails to support. James Hansen of Columbia University has made many unreasonable claims about the oil sands and other carbon sources. Some have been contentious enough to make his supporters disassociate themselves from him. They have been upset, for example, about his demand that U.S. President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton be placed under citizen’s arrest on charges of violating the Security Act if they give the go-ahead to construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. Hansen has taken facts and twisted them to support his position. He did this in a paper titled “Silence Is Deadly,” submitted to Congress and placed on the Columbia University website in June 2011.11 In it he claims that the oil sands contain an estimated four hundred gigatonnes of carbon. When released into the atmosphere, this amount of carbon would add about two hundred parts per million of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, elevating the atmospheric level accordingly. If this occurred, he warns, it would be “essentially game over.” His original statement indicated “game over for stabilizing the climate,” but most media coverage phrased it as “game over for the climate.” Hansen’s projection implies that the elevation of carbon dioxide from the use of oil originating in the oil sands would occur in one sudden emergence of carbon from the soil, an impossibility. At a daily oil sands production rate of five million barrels of oil, it would take more than a millennium to extract, process, burn and release all that carbon into the air. That’s an annual release of one-thousandth of the carbon he is referring to. Every grade nine science student knows that carbon dioxide is absorbed by living vegetation, which uses it to sustain itself and, in the process, emits oxygen. Whatever imbalance were to occur over the next thousand years, the impact from the oil sands based on Hansen’s premise would be too small to measure, yet his claim no doubt generated at least mild panic among some.

I have little regard, however, for people of any political stripe or personal agenda whose lifestyles and values are in direct opposition to the lecture they deliver to others with great passion

I understand those who find themselves disturbed by photos and headlines about the oil sands, and by the environmental impact of the petroleum industry generally. Before they use a high profile to repeat questionable comments as though they were facts, however, I would like to see some effort to pursue the truth. And while I don’t agree with the strategy, I understand that environmental activists appreciate the need to hit people over the head verbally to get their attention. Saying that the earth is getting warmer would not have been enough to sway public opinion sufficiently to inspire protest marches and attention-getting headlines. Identifying a demon such as the oil sands, and claiming, as Hansen did, that life on earth may be doomed if they continue operating, was both over the top and effective. I have little regard, however, for people of any political stripe or personal agenda whose lifestyles and values are in direct opposition to the lecture they deliver to others with great passion. This is called hypocrisy, and no one has demonstrated that particular trait with greater audacity where the oil sands are concerned than Hollywood movie director James Cameron.

Cameron is a master at creating epic presentations on a massive scale, and I admire him for that. His movies—among them Aliens, Titanic and, of course, Avatar—were fine entertainment, earning him piles of money and great acclaim. This success appears to have convinced him that he has a duty to influence a major industry in his native country (he was born in Canada, leaving for the United States at age seventeen), tossing potentially tens of thousands of people out of work while flaunting with great display the polar opposite of his sermon. For those of you unfamiliar with the details, Cameron arrived in Alberta in 2011 at the invitation of a former band chief in Fort Chipweyan. Before coming to the province, Cameron had declared the oil sands a “Pandora” and “a black eye for Canada,” generally condemning their operation and management. He also stated, “I think it’s the wrong solution for us to be doing greater and greater environmental damage, pursuing a dead-end paradigm which is fossil fuels instead of spending those billions . . . on building wind turbines. Those same areas are a great wind belt and we could be generating . . . wind energy out of the same place. Why aren’t we doing that?”

He chose not to speak to me or to any other CEO engaged in oil sands production. Instead, he took a helicopter tour of the oil sands, met with Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach and received the kind of fawning attention from the media, including television networks CTV and CBC, traditionally offered to Hollywood royalty. I will say that he came to the oil sands with a more open view than some of the press reports suggested. His widest coverage in Canada was an hour-long interview with CBC news anchor Peter Mansbridge, who in my opinion tossed softballs for Cameron to catch. I don’t believe in bad manners anywhere or toward anyone, and I’m not suggesting that Mansbridge should have exposed Cameron for his hypocrisy. I wish, however, that he had provided an opportunity for the director to reveal some of the more blatant contradictions in his attitude on his own, by asking questions such as “How many houses do you own?” Cameron owns three homes in Malibu, totalling about 2,200 square metres, or 24,000 square feet, ten times the area of an average U.S. home. None has solar panels, windmills or any other energy-saving device. All appear to rely on electric power for heating, cooling and lighting. About half of all electricity generated in California is produced by either coal or natural gas. California cannot produce enough electricity on its own, however, so it imports enormous amounts from other states, most of them using coal as a fuel on a much bigger scale than California. Cameron also owns a forty-hectare ranch in Santa Barbara.

The carbon-offset payments Cameron has made appear to be a means for him to assuage his conscience, but they do not neutralize the hypocrisy of his sermon. Here are some other questions Mansbridge might have asked.

“How do you travel between your home, your ranch and other locations?”

Cameron owns a JetRanger helicopter. He also owns a fleet of cars, motorcycles and submarines, a Humvee fire truck and, of course, a yacht.

“How did you get to Alberta from your home in California?”

He flew there in his private jet.

“What have you done to persuade American states that produce electricity from coal-burning turbines to move to a fuel source that releases lower levels of contaminants into the air, including GHG?”

I don’t know of any activity on his part beyond using this as a theme in his movie Avatar.

“What did you say to the Los Angeles Times in 2010 regarding how the world must deal with energy in future years?”

This one I know. He replied, “We’re going to have to live with less.” James Cameron can live in any style he chooses. But I think he should assess his own values and their impact on the world before he proposes that others “live with less” and attacks an industry affecting 33 million Canadians, including the 100,000 or so who rely on the oil sands, directly and indirectly, for their livelihood. I have the greatest respect for people who give a lot of thought to aspects of life that concern them, and whose actions reflect the values and concerns they express. I find it more difficult to admire someone who lectures the world about living with less while maintaining an extravagant lifestyle. Such hypocrisy weakens not only Cameron’s position on the oil sands but also his status as a credible commentator.

Sun Rise: Suncor, the oil sands and the future of energy, by former Suncor chief executive Rick George is published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd goes on sale Saturday.

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